Ex. ¡Oh yá isla católica patente! Herrera. [Hiatus.]

Ex. ¿Sabes tú^á dónde va? p. 178, XXXVIII, l. 4. [Synalepha.]

II. RHYTHMIC ACCENT

The second essential element of Spanish verse is a rhythmic distribution of accents within a line. Words have an accent of their own and another stronger accent on account of their position in a verse.

This extraordinary accentual stress, which strengthens periodically certain naturally accented syllables of a verse, is known as rhythmic accent. It plays somewhat the same rôle as did quantity in Latin verse. All other accents and pauses in the verse are subservient to the rhythmic accent.

Spanish verse being accentual, however, and not quantitative, the terms used to determine the regular recurrence of long and short syllables in Latin verse are not very applicable to it, and few compositions are regular in the arrangement of the stress.

A. LATIN TERMS OF VERSIFICATION APPLIED TO SPANISH VERSE

As Latin terms of versification are sometimes applied to Spanish verse, the following rules may be helpful.

  1. A trochaic octosyllabic line, for example, substituting stress for quantity, would be scanned
  2. / — | / — | / — | / —,
  3. with the stress on the first, third, fifth, and seventh syllables.
  4. Iambic verse would have a regular alternation of unaccented and accented syllables, — / — /, etc.
  5. Dactylic verse would have a regular recurrence of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables, etc.
  6. / — — | / — — |, etc.
  7. Amphibrachic verse would be formed by a regular recurrence of three syllables of which the middle one would be stressed, — / —. This construction is sometimes followed in lines of twelve syllables (p. 164, I, 1. 2), and also in lines of six syllables (p. 167, VII, 1.-4).
  8. Anapestic verse consists of a regular recurrence of two unstressed syllables preceding a stressed syllable, — — /. This is sometimes found in ten-syllable lines (p. 164, I, 1. i).